Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's witnesses "contradicted" the basis for Donald Trump's prosecution in the hush money case against him, according to attorney Jonathan Turley.
Trump, the presumed 2024 GOP presidential nominee, is facing 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
The criminal case brought on by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, alleges that Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to keep her silent about a rumored affair she had with Trump in 2006, which the former president denies. Trump then allegedly reimbursed Cohen and concealed it as legal expenses. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and claimed the case is politically motivated.
In an opinion piece published by The Hill on Saturday, Turley mainly focused on discrediting Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen, Bragg's star witness who turned critical of Trump after spending time in prison for eight criminal charges, including campaign finance violations related to the alleged hush money scheme involving Daniels.
Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in November 2018 in a separate case, so Bragg's office has had to build a list of other witnesses and gather evidence to corroborate Cohen's anticipated testimony.
However, Turley argued that the witnesses who have already testified—former owner of the National Enquirer David Pecker, Daniel's former lawyer Keith Davidson, and former Trump aide Hope Hicks—"contradicted the basis for the prosecution."
Turley, who is a legal analyst and professor at George Washington University Law School, has testified in the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton and the two impeachments of former President Donald Trump.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's spokesperson via email for comment.
Bragg wrote in the statement of facts of the case that Trump "orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant's electoral prospects."
Turley argued in the op-ed that Pecker would kill stories for multiple celebrities, not just Trump.
When he testified in court, Pecker said Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel got him to help kill negative press about his brother Rahm Emanuel, former White House chief of staff under the Obama administration, when he was running for Chicago mayor in 2010 and that he agreed to not write negative stories about actor Arnold Schwarzenegger when he ran for California governor in 2003.
Turley also mentioned that Pecker had killed stories for Trump "for over a decade before he ran for office."
During Pecker's cross-examination, it was revealed that the one of the first times Pecker told Trump about a potentially negative story ahead of its publication was in 1998. He tried but failed to kill the story.
When asked by Trump's attorney Emil Bove, "So, 17 years of providing President Trump with a head's up about potentially negative publicity; correct?" Pecker replied: "That's correct."
Turley also brought up Davidson's wording when explaining how he viewed the hush money deal.
"It wasn't a payoff and it wasn't hush money. It was consideration in a civil Settlement Agreement," Davidson told prosecutors in court.
Hicks, who has remained loyal to Trump after working for him on his 2016 campaign and in the White House, was subpoenaed to testify. During her testimony, she portrayed Trump as a family man who wanted to protect his family from the political sphere, which Turley mentioned in his opinion piece.
"I don't think he wanted anyone in his family to be hurt or embarrassed by anything that happened on the campaign," she told Bove during her cross-examination, adding, "He wanted them to be proud of him."
However, Pecker said that Trump was concerned about what would "the impact be to the campaign or election" rather than what his family would say when it came to negative stories potentially coming out.
When asked about this part of Pecker's testimony, Turley told Newsweek via email on Sunday: "The question is not whether bad stories can impact a defendant on a political as well as a personal basis. The question is whether the denotation of these payments as legal expenses was intended to hide a crime.
"While many of us are still unclear what that crime was, there are a myriad of reasons why such stories are killed with NDAs, including stories going back over a decade with Trump. NDAs are often treated by celebrities as a matter handled by private counsel to avoid bad press. Pecker acknowledged that fact."
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Rachel Dobkin is a Newsweek reporter based in New York. Her focus is reporting on politics. Rachel joined Newsweek in ... Read more
